Let me begin by introducing myself. My name is Cashawn Sims and I am a 24-year-old personal trainer based in the Los Angeles area. I have been a personal trainer for two years now and it’s one of the best feelings in the world because I get to help people change their lives on a daily basis.

Being a personal trainer has helped me grow, pushing me past my limits by having such a diverse group of clients who need to be taught or who need to learn differently from someone else. Because they work so hard on a consistent basis, I work just as hard because I never want to let them down. I want to continuously improve how to make fitness and working out fun!

Most people think beginning your fitness journey is super hard and takes a lot of extra effort and work. That leads to giving up mentally before even giving fitness a serious try. If you go into it with a negative mindset then it will be everything that was mentioned previously because YOU made it that way by mentally shutting down. But I’m here to tell you that it’s not as hard as you may think!

Yes, training and eating healthy will take some consistency, dedication and what some may say is hard work but practically everything you do in life takes those same efforts. What you must first realize about changing your lifestyle to be healthier and more fit is that it is all mental! Working out is way more mental than it is about your physical strength. Let me explain how.

You know if you are having a “bad day” and all your thoughts soon started happening in the real world? It’s the same concept here. If you walk into the gym and automatically tell yourself you can’t do something based on the lack of knowledge or because it looks intimidating then chances are 9/10 you won’t be able to do it – not because you’re too weak physically but because your mindset was weak. If you’re trying something for the very first time and you know how to do the exercise correctly you WILL be able to accomplish that exercise because you told yourself that you can.

What I love about fitness more than anything else is the self-love and self-confidence that you gain. You must first believe in yourself before you can tackle the exercises, and then that self belief begins to follow you outside the gym and into your everyday life. But to make sure that your mind is clear so you can push yourself in the gym, you need to change your eating habits.

Eating healthier not only helps you reach your body goals because of the increased nutritional value but it also helps unclog your mind, allowing you to push yourself more. A lot of processed foods have chemicals that affect your brain, making it hard to think as clearly as you should. Everything in the fitness world goes hand-in-hand with one another:

• working out helps you push and tone your body

• eating healthier unclogs your mind and replenishes your body with the nutrients that it needs after being broken down from the workout

• yoga helps stretch your body and also helps you understand how to exercise your mind so you’re able to push yourself even more

No, you won’t get all of this down on your first day but take baby steps each day to accomplish some of what was mentioned. Set goals each week for your workouts and your meals because being able to check something off a list helps you to realize and understand the progress you’re making!

Thank you all for reading Compete Magazine and I hope you all kill your workout today!!

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Compete is the world's first and only sports diversity magazine. Our mission is to "unite the world through sports" and we do that every day by spotlighting the best in sports news, entertainment, health and fitness and much more.